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Author Topic: Technicolor stupidity with Freaky Friday George Roher Master Film Handler Posts: 266 From: Washington DC Registered: Jul 99 posted 07-19-2003 12:10 AM                     Wanna hear something painfully stupid? My theatre had a sneak of "Freaky Friday" Thursday night, and another tonight. When the print came in Thursday afternoon, it had combination locks on the cans. My manager had to phone TES to find out how to open the cans. On top of this, Technicolor decided they wanted the print back after the Thursday screening and they sent us another print for tonight's (Friday) screening. The second print was delivered Thursday night when they picked up the first one. Neither one of these prints was a show print or anything special. This is just more stupidity from TES combined with paranoia over bootlegging. It was already a very difficult Thursday for our booth, we didn't need this crap!  |  IP: Logged Ken Layton Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1452 From: Olympia, Wash. USA Registered: Sep 1999 posted 07-19-2003 12:16 AM                     I have some bolt cutters to open those kind of shipments.  |  IP: Logged Brad Miller Administrator Posts: 17775 From: Plano, TX (36.2 miles NW of Rockwall) Registered: May 99 posted 07-19-2003 01:26 AM                     This is becoming VERY commomplace nowadays and to put it nicely is really pissing off the projectionists who have to deal with this crap. No doubt this is due to Valenti's constant bitching and moaning about piracy, when most of it is coming from the studio screeners, not theaters. Make sure when you send those back you put on a set of very thick padlocks that they do not know the combination to. We wouldn't want the depot or someone at the studio bootlegging the movie either, you know.  |  IP: Logged Aaron Garman Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1470 From: Toledo, OH USA Registered: Mar 2003 posted 07-19-2003 01:53 AM                     I feel this idea of TES is silly too. I remember back in March, we lost Gangs of NY, and picked it up again a few days later for one more week. Then, maybe no more than two weeks later, we got it again for just one show a day. Each time we had it (three in all) each was a different print. What is the point of this? Not only can it be a pain when one is building and breaking down other things, but it wears on the print more than needed. Those prints of Gangs of NY could have sat quietly with our beautiful dust covers, just waiting for another show. As for Freeky Friday, that is just nonsense. Why break a film down that you are showing the next day?! And for the love of God, it's only FREEKY FRIDAY! I mean it isn't Star Wars or Lord of the Rings...it's Jamie Lee Curtis in a Disney movie. I second the idea about those padlocks Brad. AJG  |  IP: Logged Peter Kerchinsky Master Film Handler Posts: 326 From: Seattle, WA, USA Registered: Jan 2002 posted 07-19-2003 03:43 AM                     Hey Brad We should make a film called REVENGE OF THE PROJECTIONISTS. We could use your idea about padlocking the film cans so the depot can't open them. Boy, I thought I was mean when it comes to revenge. Thanks.  |  IP: Logged Randy Stankey Film God Posts: 6539 From: Erie, Pennsylvania Registered: Jun 99 posted 07-19-2003 10:12 AM                     You can buy plasma cutters at Lowes or Home Depot for some incredibly cheap price like $199.95 Keep one of THOSE on hand for opening those stubborn cans! While you're at it, for just a couple more clams, you can get a cutter/welder. Why not seal the can back up again when you're done with it? That would REALLY prevent piracy! Just be REALLY careful! You don't want to melt the film inside the can!  |  IP: Logged Steve Kraus Film God Posts: 4094 From: Chicago, IL, USA Registered: May 2000 posted 07-19-2003 10:44 AM                    If it's a Master 175 or 177 combination lock you can reset the combination before returning the print. Just need the reset tool or an adequate substitute. Make them call you for the new combo! From Master's site: quote: Open lock with the factory set or previously set combination. NOTE: the shackle must be in the open position to reset the combination. Insert reset tool (enclosed in package) in hole on side of lock. Push reset tool in and turn 90 degrees (in either direction). Reset tool automatically stays in this position. Set wheels to desired combination. Turn and remove reset tool. Lock is now set to new combination  |  IP: Logged John T. Hendrickson, Jr Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 889 From: Freehold, NJ, USA Registered: Apr 2001 posted 07-19-2003 01:59 PM                     And...How about you're on vacation for a week when they call?  |  IP: Logged Nicholas Roznovsky Expert Film Handler Posts: 156 From: College Station, TX, USA Registered: Apr 2001 posted 07-19-2003 02:34 PM                        What?!? Technicolor doing something stupid and inconvenient? Perish the thought! Just return the print locked up with one of those $8-$10 round heavy locks you can get at storage places. Those things are just about darn impossible to get past without the key.  |  IP: Logged Ian Price Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1714 From: Denver, CO Registered: Jun 99 posted 07-19-2003 02:34 PM                     Theatres need to charge the studios and or Technicolor $100 for each, unnecessary build-up of a print. Technicolor also needs to be charged $100 every time a print is delivered or picked up, outside of their established delivery window.  |  IP: Logged Dave Macaulay Film God Posts: 2321 From: Toronto, Canada Registered: Apr 2001 posted 07-19-2003 03:54 PM                     This insanity is almost certainly on orders from the studio, and the lab/distributor is probably just as annoyed as the theatre people. I happened to experience the security arrangements for the negative and test prints of a recent "blockbuster" at the printing lab. Total overblown paranoia. Nothing surprises me except that someone thinks "freeky friday" is a treasure worth protecting that way.  |  IP: Logged Dustin Mitchell Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1865 From: Mondovi, WI, USA Registered: Mar 2000 posted 07-19-2003 07:02 PM                     Aaron, the situation you describe is likely the fault of your booker and/or the studio, not TES. Imagine all the money it costs them to mess around with shipping prints back and forth. I am usually inclined to believe that the studies are behind this BS when I hear about it because I have been in the booth for four years now and not ONCE have I ran into a sitaion with TES anywhere near as ridiculous as what I read about on F-T.  |  IP: Logged Nicholas Roznovsky Expert Film Handler Posts: 156 From: College Station, TX, USA Registered: Apr 2001 posted 07-19-2003 07:49 PM                        quote: Aaron, the situation you describe is likely the fault of your booker and/or the studio, not TES. Imagine all the money it costs them to mess around with shipping prints back and forth. Whoa - when's the last time TES or a studio paid for shipping a print? I seem to get billed for shipping on every single one, which is great because some bonehead at TES has decided that I need to switch prints between a Thursday sneak preview and the Friday regular engagement. I'm sure that TES is locking cans on orders of studio execs with too much time on their hands, but as far as print movement goes I doubt the studios have very much to do about it. In the end, the same theaters end up getting prints of the same film. Why would they get some perverse pleasure out of making us switch prints for no discernable reason? Bookers only care about individual prints when a particular theater hasn't returned one of theirs on time and the studio is breathing down their necks about it. I doubt they're the ones sitting there with a giant map, pushing the little film can markers around to different theaters like war strategists and giggling with delight. TES, on the other hand, gets to tell everyone that they handled 12 billion print movements last year, when only maybe half of them were necessary. I'm tired of building up and breaking down prints of the same film in the same day so TES can carry out their evil agenda of inefficiency. Yeah, it does cost a lot to get a print and then send it out two days later only to get the same darn film the day after that. I wish TES would pay for that, then maybe they wouldn't be so inclined to move prints around unnecessarily.  |  IP: Logged Paul Salley Expert Film Handler Posts: 105 From: Liberal, Kansas Registered: Jan 2001 posted 07-19-2003 07:59 PM                  Instead of tearing down your print of "Freaky Friday" you should have just took the new shipment and switched cans.  |  IP: Logged Dustin Mitchell Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1865 From: Mondovi, WI, USA Registered: Mar 2000 posted 07-19-2003 08:03 PM                     I imagine there are more costs to shipping a print to and from warehouses than merely the Airborne bill. In any event it is still a fact that not have I EVER had to tear down a print from a Thursday sneak and build up a new one for a Friday opening. Hell, we almost always get to keep our prints from the sneak even when it was a week before the regular opening. Placing the blame for this nonesense on bookers is actually something I recall seeing on Film-Tech. I'm no expert on bookings but I imagine if a booker handled the sneak and the regular opening as two seperate 'bookings' with the studio TES would be ordered to drop off two seperate prints. TES doesn't just 'know' when you end a print. They are informed by the studio as to what movies are ending and thus should be picked up and which are opening and need to be dropped off. To my knowledge TES doesn't pick up a single reel of film that they haven't been instructed to pick up by the studios. Perhaps I'm completely off in my thinking here but this is what I have gathered from reading these forums and talking to different people in the industry in the few years I've been in the booth.  |  IP: Logged

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